Ding YiScintillement

Past: October 18 → December 31, 2014

The exhibition Scintillement is dedicated to the artist Ding Yi, one of the unequivocal protagonists of contemporary Chinese art. Ding Yi’s work reflects a voluntary detachment from all iconographic and figurative reference. Since the beginning of his practice, the artist has moved away from Chinese tradition and the academy, choosing abstraction instead. Whether in paintings or drawings, the works of Ding Yi are made through the repetition of the same module manually applied over the entire surface. The line that is omnipresent and reproduced everywhere is the + sign, which keeps reappearing, evoking a kind of mapping where possible routes are multiple and when looked at closely, infinite.

Ding Yi conceives his works as devoid of any intrinsic meaning, the artist’s purpose being to “record the traces left by the very rapid urban development that characterizes today’s world, while maintaining a neutral position.” By-passing any judgment, Ding Yi transposes all his perceptions onto canvas or paper. The vibration and insomnia of cities, notably of Shanghai where he lives, are rendered through the accumulation and configuration of juxtaposed signs. Like a 21st century pointillist, the careful and constant application of the technique reveals an overview where the delirium of contemporary productivity is evoked by vivid colours, often inspired by the neon signs illuminating the city, and the density of the composition. The proliferation of square crosses, a sign that is pure and free of any association of meaning, creates a rhythm of expansion and contraction that becomes a metaphor for the frenzy of urban life, dominated by the great tyrant of our era, which is time.

Born in 1962, Ding Yi lives and works in Shanghai. He obtained a first degree from Shanghai Arts and Crafts Institute in 1983 and a second with the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Shanghai in 1990. Ding Yi enjoys international recognition and has participated in the Venice Biennale (1993), the Yokohama Triennale (2001) and the Guangzhou Biennale (2002), among others. In 2008 the Museum of Modern Art of Bologna in Italy dedicated an important solo exhibition to the artist. Ding Yi has been an art professor at Fudan University in Shanghai since 2005.